Point Sur Lighthouse Investigation

The Point Sur Lighthouse in Big Sur California was built in 1889 and is said to be haunted by the ghosts of both shipwreck victims and light-keepers past… So, when our friends at “Ghost Watch Paranormal” invited us along on an overnight paranormal investigation of the historic lighthouse, naturally we said, “yes, please!”

Seven of us arrived at the base of the lighthouse’s rocky outpost on a crisp, sunny afternoon last fall and made the drive up the steep, winding road to the top. We had the entire island – which is also a State Historic Park – to ourselves, save for two wonderful docents, Monica and Julie, who accompanied us and allowed us access to the buildings.

In the late afternoon, we toured the extensive grounds which include several outbuildings along with the main lighthouse.

As a bonus, the friendly docents even let us poke our heads up into the lighthouse prism. Score!

As evening set in, we split up into groups and set off to see if we could find any evidence of ghostly activity.

Let’s skip straight to the weirdest thing that happened. After spending some time in both the head light-keeper’s house and the assistant keeper’s house, a group of three of us made our way across the island to the old blacksmith’s workshop. We had been in the building for approximately 5 minutes, when one of us asked the question, “how long have you worked here at the lighthouse.” Suddenly, we heard a strange noise that sounded like a… voice?? Laughter?? What do you think this was? Have a listen:

Whatever it was had sounded very close to us and clearly, it freaked us out:

Ok, perhaps not our proudest moment, but just wait until a freaky child-voice-laughter-thingy happens in your ear while you’re standing in a dark, haunted building on a craggy outcrop of an island in the middle of the night and see how you react! I’d like to play you more of our reactions but it would take too long to bleep out the rest of the recording.

We ran outside the building and looked to see if anyone else was around or playing a practical joke, but no one was anywhere at all near the building or even on our side of the island for that matter. Creeeepy.

In looking for a logical explanation, the only thing we could come up with is that it could have possibly been a stray sound made by a seal and then carried upwards by the wind. But then again, there were numerous seals at the bottom of the cliffs which we could hear barking and calling in the distance all night, and this was the only time during the entire night that we heard anything at all like this and it sounded really close to us. So, who knows.

We don’t expect to find any hard answers regarding the nature of and existence of ghosts on our investigations – it’s more about the experience. And our experience at the Point Sur Lighthouse is one we will most certainly look back on for years to come and shiver / cry about.